by Dave Cravens
65.
Parker couldn’t sleep a wink that night.
She lied in her bed, tracing familiar patterns in the texture of the off-white popcorn ceiling. The same ceiling she had stared at as a teenager the night before any big mid-term or final. Parker couldn’t help but to chuckle at how nervous she got on test day, when nearly thirty years later, she’d be hard pressed to remember any of the material. Recalling how the Pythagoras theorem worked or the details of a French revolution did little to settle the myriad of questions that raced through her mind this night. And yet, one question, above all, kept surfacing in her stream of consciousness, as if gasping for air to keep from drowning--
Why me?
Heller’s death was one thing. But why was Parker’s car chosen to stash the body? Why was an alleged killer continually poking at her with cryptic phone texts? What was the purpose of it all?
Parker watched her stream of questions wash away, until only one trickle remained.
Why don’t I just ask the killer?
Parker sat up in her bed, staring at the last text message from Evil Incarnate:
Nice speech tonight. Almost believed it.
Parker knew pursuing a text conversation with a murderer was probably not a strategy Sheriff Bill would approve of. Or her mother. Or any sane person. But Parker was convinced whoever was working Heller’s phone was practically screaming for her attention. Why? Parker’s thumbs went to work as she composed a new message:
Dear Killer. You seem desperate for my attention. I’m tired of your games. What the fuck is your problem?
Parker cringed. Don’t invite more trouble than you’ve already got, especially where murderers are concerned. She quickly deleted the text and composed a new one.
What do you want?
Parker tapped the send button. She stared blankly at the phone screen, half-expecting a reaction. Five minutes later, she put the phone down in disappointment.
If the killer was smart, he or she would keep the phone off so as not to be tracked. Only when the phone was turned back on would he or she be inclined to respond. And who knew when that would be?
Wide awake, Parker went back to staring at the ceiling.
This person has singled me out. This person continues to engage me. I’ve met this person. I know this person. Right? Maybe—
Parker looked across the room to a familiar bookshelf. Neatly organized biographies of Jon Bonjovi were next to a haphazard library of middle school and high-school yearbooks.
Could this go back further than the past few weeks?
Parker slipped out of bed to cross the room. She pulled the yearbook from her senior year, and began paging through it, her nostrils filling with ozone emitting off pages unseen for decades. Her eyes scanned the hundreds of pictures of teenagers, some who she recognized, some she’d never met. Parker had graduated with five hundred other students, and the high school was simply too big to know everyone. She smiled as she found Julie’s photo. The younger version sported much fuller cheeks, with large round glasses and bangs that curled up toward the sky. Her hair formed a perfect triangle.
Shit, Julie, you really bloomed later in life, didn’t you?
Parker turned the page to find photos of herself in Debate Club, Math League, and Future Leaders of America. She rolled her eyes, disgusted at the awkward teenager who stared blankly into the camera so long ago. “Yuck.” She flipped another few pages and squinted as she found a boy who looked like a much thinner, stick-pole version of Sheriff Bill dressed in an over-sized tuxedo. Young Bill sported a black satin cape with his arms outstretched dramatically as if casting a spell. The caption read: “Magic Club.” No one else appeared in the picture.
Maybe he made all the other members disappear? Poor Bill.
Parker flipped a few more pages. She found the younger version of Baby Face in the sophomore section. I went to school with her? Even Holly, the current PTA president, retained her ridiculously large smile when cheering for the varsity football and wrestling teams. But aside from those few faces, the more Parker dug in, the more people she initially thought she remembered, only to become less sure if she truly recognized anyone else at all. People can change a lot over thirty years. As exhaustion finally crept in and her eyes grew heavy, Parker began to question everything she’d seen tonight. Could she trust anyone she went to high school with?
Parker shook her head and closed the book.
This could spiral out of control pretty quickly.
Parker took a deep breath, welcoming the tiredness like a warm blanket. After tossing the yearbook onto the window seat, she slipped back under her bed’s covers. Sleep came quickly. So quickly, that she didn’t even notice her phone light up and buzz with an alert:
There is Motion in your Backyard.
66.
“Did you see this?”
Valerie lifted her phone up before the yawning face of her daughter who had finally sauntered into Monday’s breakfast.
Parker squinted, reading the motion alert from the back yard last night. “Yeah?” she answered in the tone of a question. “So?” Parker gently pushed her mother’s phone aside to notice that Maddy, Drew and Ally were already dressed and munching their cereal at the table. “What’s going on here?”
Maddy’s spoon clinked in her empty bowl. “You overslept,” she answered. Maddy didn’t bother to even glance up as she took her bowl to the sink. “So, I stepped in and got the kids ready for school.”
Kids? You’re still a kid! “Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?” asked Parker.
“Ally doesn’t have school,” Drew added. “You woke her up for nothing.”
“Shut up, Drew.”
Parker grinned as Maddy walked past her to exit the kitchen. “Annnnd, there she is.”
Valerie lifted her phone back up in front of Parker’s face. “What do you mean ‘so?’”
Parker frowned as she tried dodging the phone, but Valerie kept matching her head fakes to keep it in her face. “I looked at the video log this morning.” She snatched the phone out of her mother’s hands. “There was nothing there.”
Valerie turned her nose up. “Sweet Susan Hayward, there’s a video log?”
The question gave Parker pause. Valerie normally did a good job of keeping pace with advances in technology, certainly much more than her friends who still thought phones were just for making phone calls. But every once in a blue moon her mother would show her age. Parker always found it ironic that the greater the age, the younger the reaction to tech. “Yes, that’s the whole point. The app keeps a record of everything the cameras detect.” Parker recalled the video clip from the motion in the backyard last night when she fell asleep. She tapped on it and showed Valerie a forty second black and white video of their backyard bathed infrared light. Other than the subtle sway of a few tree branches in the wind, nothing moved in the yard. “See?”
Valerie let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good to know. I have to admit, after the text you received at the funeral, I’m a little on edge.”
“Understandable.” Which also tells me I should definitely not mention that I replied to that same text.
“Then what triggered the motion? Why did the camera go off?”
Parker hunched her shoulders. “Maybe a leaf fell, or a squirrel sneezed, I don’t know. But nothing else was triggered, and everything seems to be in order. I think we’re good.”
Drew’s ears perked. He slowly twisted in his chair to catch his mother’s attention. “Unless it was Heller’s ghost!”
“Oh no!” Ally added, slapping her hands onto her cheeks.
Parker sighed.
“Can I see it?” Drew exploded out of his chair to paw at his grandmother’s phone. “Please?”
Parker handed the phone over, allowing Drew to ingest it with wide eyes. “See?” she assured. “Nothing there. Glory said we’d get false alarms now and then.”
“Hmmmmm,” Drew rubbed his chin. “Ghosts are usually invisible.
”
“Usually?”
“I’m gonna have to look at this in the lab. Can you send it to me?”
“Do you have an email?” challenged Parker.
“Do I need an email?”
Parker plucked the phone from Drew’s hands and handed it back to Valerie. “We’ll figure something out.” She winked. “Go finish getting ready.”
“On it!” Drew sprinted out of the kitchen and up the front stairs.
“What about you?” Valerie asked Parker. “Don’t you need to get ready?”
“Not without coffee, I don’t.” Parker poured herself a cup of the machine roasted coffee, took one sip and immediately spat it out. “Gahhhhhhhhh!”
“Maddy took it upon herself to make a pot.”
“It tastes like—socks!”
Valerie arched an eyebrow, sensing Parker’s performance might be some dramatic ploy to achieve an end. “Do you want me to drop off the kids, this morning?”
Parker cringed as she took another sip, then force-gulped down enough caffeine to wake herself up. The sheer horror of the experience was enough to bulge her eyes. “Nope! I got this! Today is the day I go and do the thing!”
“Which thing? You mean creating a successful fundraiser for the music program?”
Parker wiped the coffee moustache off her face with her shirt sleeve. Shit. Forgot about that. “Uhhh, yes, that -- too.”
“Or do you mean strengthening your maternal bonds with your children?”
“That’s a given.” Parker tried to wipe the lingering taste of the coffee off her teeth with her tongue. “Let’s just cut to the chase and say I’m going to solve this goddamn murder, ghost and all.”
“Doing all that today, are you?”
Parker raised her index finger to mark a point. Any point. “I’ve got a plan.”
“Well, if you see Heller’s ghost, tell her to stop floating around our backyard. Next time she does it, she’ll find herself at the wrong end of my twelve gauge.”
Parker slammed down her coffee mug, spun on her heel and marched for the stairs. “You can’t shoot a ghost, Mom, everybody knows that!”
Valerie tilted her head. “It won’t stop me from trying.”
67.
Infused with sock-flavored coffee…
Parker dropped Maddy and Drew off at the playground and then proceeded to march directly into the Oak Creek Elementary school front office. Ready to blast any obstacle to smithereens with a dose of over-caffeinated reasoning, Parker’s eyes immediately locked onto her first target – Silver Fox. The receptionist sat quietly at her desk, unaware of the verbal smackdown she was about to endure should she so much as bat an eye at Parker’s request. “I’d like to meet with Principal Mendez,” Parker demanded. “Is she in?”
To Parker’s surprise, the Silver Fox kept her nose buried in the soap digest magazine she held. “Sure,” she answered in a dull, unimpressed tone. The Fox casually flicked her wrist in the direction of Mendez’s office. “Go right in.”
Parker nodded with a surprised stutter. “Alright then!”
“Go on, now.” The Fox’s eyes never left her magazine.
“Thank you, I will!” Parker continued her march toward Mendez’s office, suddenly aware of how loud her own voice was. She knocked and pushed open the door, revealing a tall, thin dark-haired woman dressed in a business suit standing before Mendez’s desk.
“I don’t understand why this keeps happening!” the woman blasted Mendez. “This has got to be the tenth time I’ve been in your office to go over this!”
“Eleventh,” Mendez calmly replied as she kneaded her hands together and rested them on her desk.
Parker was about to apologize for intruding on the conversation, when she realized neither Mendez or her opponent had noticed her. Parker took a half step back out of the doorway. She’d seen this fiery woman before, pointed out by Julie on the playground as a Helicopter Mom affectionately referred to as “Cray-Cray.” Nothing was ever good enough for Cray-Cray when it came to the care and safety of her child, as she had personally charged Oak Creek Elementary with making that a priority over everything else. “The point is,” Ms. Cray-Cray continued. She lashed an accusatory finger at Mendez. “My child could have starved!”
Parker watched closely for Mendez’s reaction. The young principal’s normally immaculate appearance was, for once, not without flaw. Several of Mendez’s hairs were out of place, and slight bags shown just beneath her eyes. Despite that, Mendez stared at the woman across from her with absolute focus and calm.
“I’m sorry that your child missed his morning snack yesterday,” Mendez apologized. “But I can assure you, there was no danger of him starving.”
“Tenth snack!” Cray-Cray corrected. “He’s missed ten of them!”
“Over the course of a year.”
“Do you know what that can do to a child’s development? His growth? I’m probably going to have to go to the doctor now and get a prescription for growth hormones! And if I do? I’m sending you the bill!”
Mendez slowly nodded. “You are welcome to try.”
Cray-Cray clenched her fists. “I don’t even understand how this keeps happening! Can you explain to me why this keeps happening? I mean, I delivered the snack to your front office last Friday, with explicit instructions to give it to Charles. Explicit instructions! And no one was here!”
Mendez took a deep breath. “So, you didn’t speak with my receptionist? Or a teacher? Or anyone?”
“No, but I wrote out explicit instructions—”
“Explicit, yes.”
“—and I left the snack bag on the front chair like I always do. You would think after ten times your people would figure it out!”
“The front office is very busy,” Mendez explained. “And if no one was present, we were probably off dealing with something very important.”
“You’re saying my child is not important?”
“What I’m trying to say is that if you want to guarantee your child has a morning snack, it is probably best to send it with him when he leaves for school.”
Cray-Cray blinked. For a moment, it looked as though she might have fully understood Mendez’s statement. Then she started to practically foam at the mouth. “I’m a busy woman.”
“Of course.”
“I work full time. Do you work full time?”
Holy. Fuck. Parker felt her blood boil. How much of this shit is Mendez going to put up with?
“I do work full time.” Mendez’s eyes narrowed. “Here, at this school.”
“You’re making fun of me!” Cray-Cray blasted. She tossed her arms up in the air. “Where is Vice Principal Heller? At least she would listen to me! At least she would make an effort to correct the problem!”
Mendez slowly stood up and looked Cray-Cray directly into the eye. “She’s dead.”
Cray-Cray blinked again. “I’m going to be calling the USDA about this.”
“Do what you must.”
Cray-Cray clutched her purse closely and spun on her stiletto heels to march out of the office. She glared at Parker as she passed by. “Good luck dealing with that one!” growled Cray-Cray.
Parker turned her head to track Cray-Cray as she opened the front office door. “Good luck calling the United States Drug Association!” answered Parker. Cray-Cray didn’t hear the statement as she b-lined to her BMW parked in the handicapped space. Within thirty seconds she had peeled out of the school’s parking lot. “Because, you know, the USDA is all about child starvation.”
Parker pivoted back to Mendez, who sat back down at her desk to begin typing away. Parker nearly felt bad for the young principal – and what she was about to do to her. Should I stir a boiling pot? Parker held back a grin. Of course, I should. “Good morning, Principal Mendez!”
68.
Mendez kept her eyes glued to her computer screen.
“Now is not a good time, Ms. Monroe.”
“Come on, I can’t be nearly as bad as Cray-
Cray, can I?” asked Parker. She took a decisive step onto Mendez’s checkered carpet. “And your receptionist seemed to think this was the perfect time.”
Mendez frowned as she stared at the open door behind Parker. “She just let you walk in here?”
“All but drew me a map.”
“That would make you the third interruption this morning!” Mendez raised her voice enough for it to carry out the office door, only to be answered by silence. “She’s not out there is she?”
Parker looked back through the doorway for any hint of the Silver Fox. All she found was an empty swivel chair. “No.” Normally, Fox was a tight-ass, guarding the front office like a Pitbull. What had changed? Heller. Fox never was protective of the office, thought Parker. She was protective of Heller. Now that she’s gone-- “Maybe, she’s having a hard time,” Parker offered. “I imagine she and Heller were very close.”
Mendez sighed as she frantically clicked her mouse. “I’ve a lot of work to do, Ms. Monroe. So, if you could--.”
“You must be incredibly busy taking on all of Heller’s duties,” Parker interrupted. “Is that why you didn’t attend Heller’s funeral?”
Mendez’s mouse hand froze. She glowered at Parker, before carefully, and slowly closing her laptop.
Oh shit, that got your attention didn’t it? Parker tried to pass the question off innocently. “You had to have known parents would notice.”
Mendez instantly drained her face of any trace of emotion or expression. She became a blank page – entirely unreadable. It was a tactic often used by professional poker players, something that could only be mastered after years of training and practice. “Of course, I knew people would notice,” answered Mendez. “I knew people would talk. And gossip. And judge. None of that matters to me. I had my reasons.”
Parker stepped further into the office.
“Reasons I don’t need to share with you.”
Parker stopped dead in her tracks. Mendez was clearly putting up every wall she could. What are you hiding, Mendez? “Believe it or not, I happen to care about this school. I’m here to help.”